Giving something, your undivided and focused attention is often the one hurdle many of us have to overcome to achieve something great. Personally, I’ve sometimes struggled with giving a task my undivided attention. It’s easy to get distracted. You might be excited about accomplishing your goals that instead of paying attention to the task you need to do right now, you spend too much time focusing on the future. A notification on your cell phone could go off and then you instantly forget that creative idea that was just forming in your mind. You might be learning a new skill but allow yourself to be distracted by taking too many breaks to do chores around the house. A person is speaking to you about something important and that could change your perspective, but you allow your mind to wander and get distracted.
To achieve something amazing in your life, you must give something your focus and your complete and undivided attention. You cannot expect to gain something wonderful in life by doing little work. Doing hard work requires that you give your undivided attention.
Try these tips below to give your undivided attention to the tasks and people around you.
Put your phone away. Recognize that your smartphone can be resourceful and entertaining but is often distracting. You might have a hundred reasons on why you cannot turn off your phone or leave it away from you. However, you need to recognize that your cell phone could be an obstacle for your success. When you constantly respond to messages, you get distracted. The amount of time you spend distracted is often undercalculated. Because you were sitting in front of your computer for an hour, the majority of which was playing on your phone, you might incorrectly believe that you got much more done than you did. When you are working, put the phone away. Keep it in another room, turn it off, silence your notifications and keep it out of arms reach. Get in the habit of doing work without your phone at hand.
Avoid social media. Just like your smartphone, social media is very distracting. Many people start and end their day logging onto social media which can delay you from getting out of bed and your sleep cycle. Social media is a great way to entertain and distract yourself with random things throughout the day, but social media doesn’t give you much room for real learning, understanding and feeding creative energy. The moment you look at social media, is potentially a moment where you become distracted. When you work, avoid social media. Try to limit your usage of social media so that you prioritize getting things done before winding down and looking at social media.
Change your location. The area in which you try to get things done is important. If being home is noisy and full of distractions, then you might find it tough to sit down and work on things. Work in an area where you feel like there aren’t any distractions and you have peace to get things done.
Time of day matters too. Everyone is most productive at varying points of the day. Last year I changed my hours at work so that I go to work an hour earlier and leave an hour earlier. This simple change has been extremely beneficial for me. I get into the office and it’s very peaceful. Nobody is there yet so it’s quiet, relaxed and I have time to get important things out of the way without distractions. Whenever I’m learning something completely new, I tend to be at my most alert during the afternoon and early evening. I know that learning any new subjects late at night rarely gets my undivided attention, so I try to avoid doing work during those times. An obstacle getting in your way of giving something your undivided attention could be the time of day you work on something. Figure out the best times for you and stick to working on things during those times.
Focus on one or two tasks at a time. Giving something your undivided attention doesn’t usually mean multi-focusing and spreading your attention and resources thin. In other words, you give a ton of tasks a little bit of your time but make very little progression as a result. Most of the time this tactic doesn’t work great and you will find that you are always struggling to understand certain things that need more of your attention. When I was learning programming in the past, I was bad at it. I did give myself time to learn programming but ended up spreading my attention to other tasks that were easier for me. I wasn’t doing myself any favors with this tactic. One of my weaknesses was programming. Yet even though this was a weakness, I’d spend little time learning it. I would pay attention to it for about 10-20 minutes at a time and switch to a different subject when it felt too hard. Yet, the only way for me to get better at programming was by giving it my focus and undivided attention. This means that I need to commit at least one hour a day to mastering that material. Keep your focus on the one or two tasks that absolutely need your attention right now. There will be time to get to other tasks in the future, but for now, focus on getting these tasks done and doing them right.
Recognize that there will be many days where you just don’t feel like it. Everybody has days where they just don’t want to do something. You will feel like you don’t want to exercise today. There will be many days where you don’t want to go to class or work. You will feel like you mentally can’t do it today. That feeling is normal but what matters is how you respond to that feeling. You can either give into the feeling and do nothing or push through and do something. Understand that not feeling like doing something is not a reason to not show up and give something your attention. Instead push through and be present. Go to class or work. Read that book. Study. Exercise. Push yourself to show up and get started.
Appreciate your progress. Instead of focusing on your goals and counting how far behind you are from reaching those goals, appreciate your progress. Understanding how much progress you are making by giving something your undivided attention, will help you keep working on that habit of giving something your focus every day. For instance, you could focus on the fact that you are not yet ready to run a marathon or you could appreciate the progress you have made from being able to run a half-marathon after several months of rigorous training. Appreciating this progress shows you that the daily habits of pushing through and running most days of the week is paying off for you.
Gain insights and give respect. When you give someone your undivided attention, you allow yourself to ingest their wisdom, insight and unique perspective on the world. The people in your life are worthy of your attention. Your instructor, partner, manager, loved ones, children, parents and role model all are worthy of your attention. When you focus on giving your undivided attention to these relationships, you allow the quality of those relationships to improve. Giving respect to people by showing how attentive you are is worth it.
Gaining a habit of giving something your undivided attention takes practice. Each day work on a task with your undivided attention.